Backlight [Hardcover]

Pirkko Saisio, now a teenager, can’t decide which she hates most: God, her father, or her growing breasts.Grandpa has moved into the room long promised to her, and Mother, overworked and distant, tries to keep the peace between her headstrong daughter and husband. When she’s not escaping into her books, Pirkko has fun getting into trouble. That is until her Finnish teacher suggests she might have what it takes to be a real writer, but only if she is willing to work hard and make certain sacrifices. 

Years later, Pirkko spends the historic summer of 1968 working at a Swiss orphanage. The world is shifting around her, and to make matters even more complicated: she’s homesick. At the orphanage no one understands her German, and away from home for the first time, she struggles to make sense of her suppressed queerness. InBacklight, the Finlandia Prize-winning author looks backward and inward, once again emerging, in Mia Spangenberg’s sensitive translation, with an intimate portrait of a life lived in language.USThe streets are filled with protestors, red flags, slogans, and firebombs, and I’m sitting in this white room like a duck in a cardboard box.

“Getting a child narrator right is no easy task, and Saisio executes it perfectly by painting the girl as a magnetic mix of precocious maturity and naive innocence, holding the potential for some surprisingly deep insights as well as silly hijinks. Humour, especially when a consequence of the mismatch between the narrator’s rich inner worlds and her ability to cogently communicate it to her loved ones, is a significant feature of the narrative, adding refreshing levity in between the heavy emotional punches."—Areeb Ahmad, Asymptote

“[Saisio’s] fragmented bursts of prose make for a propulsive read. Full of snide humor, surprising turns of phrase, and insilSN